A ballad for the Bandit

But he's not with us anymore either, and I can only warble in the shower, so this will have to do.

Burt Reynolds died Thursday at the age of 82. I can't speak to much of his filmography -- I saw "Deliverance" once and of course it was good, and I am vaguely aware of his work in "The Longest Yard" -- and since I never met him or had any sort of relationship with the man, it's silly to feel anything with his death.

His friends, his family, his colleagues -- they lost a man, one with a long career and maybe an even longer list of foibles.

I feel like I lost the Bandit.

Bandit, you're reckless, and you live much too hard.

"Smokey and the Bandit" was the second-biggest film in 1977 box office receipts, but it was the finest thing to come out of American cinemas in that year (Come at me, "Star Wars" bros) or maybe any other. The plot is not intricate -- it's a 28-hour beer run challenge from Atlanta to Texarkana, Texas and back -- and it's about as subtle as the massive turquoise ring and watch band combo Reynolds' Bandit wears. Characters like Jackie Gleason's Sheriff Buford T. Justice are large and loud, played for comedy without much of a thought toward backstory or development, and the picture, with its obsession with cars and car chases and wrecks, plays like it was written by a stuntman.

(And that's because it was.)

Bandit steal a lady's heart. With only a smile.

I was in college before I saw "Smokey and the Bandit." (Do forgive my delay since it did come out eight years before I was born.) I had a TA in a political science class who'd occasionally make jokes about it, and I gave it try on some late-night cable broadcast. I was hooked. Every line from Gleason is quotable, Reed is a folksy country treat and Sally Field shines.

But it's not what it is without Reynolds.

It couldn't have been his hardest gig since it's scarcely 90 minutes, and he has maybe 45 seconds of emoting. Yet his magnetism (maybe less charitably, his ego) carries the movie. In the first 15 minutes, we get the film's iconic image during a montage: It's just after a chase, and the Bandit has pulled up next to a house in a dead stop. The smokey on his tail, none the wiser, drives away, and Reynolds mugs directly into the camera like he -- the man and not the actor -- got away with the heist of the century.

It's absurd. But it works.

Bandit is the closest thing to a straight man "Smokey" has since Field's Frog is a bewildered Northern transplant and Reed's Snowman is too busy singing and playing with a dog to serve as any grounded center of the film. He jokes and quips and grins his way through every ludicrous beat, and none of it would fly without his charm.

He's going up to glory riding 18 wheels.

I claim "Smokey and the Bandit" to be a masterpiece of American cinema with only the tip of my tongue in my cheek. It's undeniably fun and remarkably progressive on race for something set and made in the South of the 1970s. (Minorities are treated with dignity and respect, and Justice's racism is the source of one of the funnier jokes in the film. Not much, sure, but more than a lot made today.) It's best enjoyed with a cold Coors but impossible to watch without a smile.

For 40 years, we've had the Bandit. He was spoofed in "SNL"'s "Celebrity Jeopardy." Celebrated for all his warts in "Archer" and "The Last Movie Star." But Burt Reynolds was immortalized in "Smokey and the Bandit."